Spatial database system for generation of weather event and risk reports

ABSTRACT

The present invention is a tool including a spatial database and a data warehouse used to track portfolio sites that are affected by weather events, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, hail, tornados, or manmade events. A spatial database provides rich spatial geometry features using earth longitude and latitude as a 2-D reference system in spatial system. A insurer portfolio site, which is defined by longitude and latitude data, includes portions that are represented as a point. A weather event is represented as polygon in the spatial database. Based on user configured threshold values, it may be determined when a point falls inside, or on a boundary, of a polygon to identify a site that is affected by that weather event and corresponding reports may be generated, including maps identifying the affected sites and total insured value calculations for the affected sites, in order to gauge risk.

The present invention claims the benefit of the filing date ofco-pending provisional application No. 60/780,110 filed Mar. 8, 2006.

The present application pertains to a system for generating weatherevent reports and risk reports including a spatial database containinginsurer portfolio data and boundary information and a data warehouse tostore the portfolio data.

BACKGROUND

In the present world, insurance companies want to know how much of theirTotal Insured Value (TIV) is exposed and how their TIV will be affectedby weather related catastrophes, like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadosor wildfires or in response to manmade events typically relayed overnewswire. Traditionally, they measure the exposure affected by anyweather related event only after their insurers begin to file claims. Inorder to extrapolate individual claims to TIV usually takes a lot ofanalytical work to be done per individual weather event, and results areonly available after few days. A system that provides an industrystandard framework to automate weather related catastrophe exposureanalysis quickly, or in real-time, is desired in the insurance industry.

Systems for rating geographic areas based on severity and frequency ofmeteorologic data are known for analyzing meteorological conditions.Such systems are known for combining meteorologic data with a ratingchart to show the insurability of a structure located in a geographicarea. These systems may use an information screen that identifies acumulative rating factor for a geographic area such as a county. Thecumulative rating factor may be used to rank geographic areas. Suchsystems have been used to show such ranking based on annual data.However, such a system is not capable of providing ranking of expectedexposure within minutes or hours after a meteorologic event or based onreal-time data.

Other systems are known that provide an automated system and method forprocessing real-time meteorological data. Warnings may be distributedbased on real-time site specific weather information, such as theSafe-T-Net system or real-time local Doppler radar. These systemsdescribe use of threat information that is combined to produce acomposite threat field, which is queried and compared to one or morethreshold values that are user definable. The composite threat fieldmeeting and/or exceeding one or more of the threshold values can beautomatically identified as an area of threat and can be immediatelyavailable for graphic display, for automated alert notification or otherdissemination. Such systems are not used to interpolate insurance riskdata. Thus, such known systems do not combine real-time meteorologicaldata with insurance risk data to generate reports based on userconfigurable threshold values.

SUMMARY

The present invention includes a system including a spatial database anda data warehouse that combines real-time meteorological and catastrophedata with insurance risk data in order to provide an aggregation oftotal risk for a portfolio as affected by weather events. Reports arecreated that may include graphic illustrations on a map and are reportedto users based on user configurable threshold values in view of theuser's specific portfolio. For example, threshold values including TIV,storm severity and total loss for a user's specific portfolio may beidentified. Also, major catastrophic reports can be customized from thesystem reports and include data for single major events, such as a majorwater surge, terrorist act or any other perils that are not availablereal-time, through, updates provided through the present invention.

In an embodiment, the present invention provides for a system forgenerating weather event reports comprising: (a) a spatial database thatincludes insurer portfolio data and has a point to graphically representa portion of the insurer portfolio data, the spatial database includingweather data and boundary information, (b) an impact analysis tool forlocating the point that falls within the boundary information, and (c) areporting engine for generating a report that includes mapped weatherdata and the point affected by the weather data. In an embodiment, thesystem may further comprise an orchestration tool that sorts the weatherdata and insurer portfolio data based on a user defined threshold value.The threshold value may include a date range, weather event, geographicarea, TIV range or property value that are received by an automaticnotification server (ANS) in order to generate a report for the user.

In an embodiment, the system may load the weather data at least onceevery twenty-four hours and the system may include a mapping engine formapping the weather data and providing a data warehouse to store theinsurer portfolio data. The weather data may include at least tornado,hail, wind, earthquake, water surge, hurricane track, hurricane windarea or hurricane wind path data. Other manmade events such as fires orterrorist attacks may also be mapped. In an embodiment, the system mayfurther comprise an orchestration tool to process user configurablethreshold values that assist the mapping engine in preparing the mappedweather data. The spatial database may provide polygons representativeof weather data boundary information, and the impact analysis toolmatches the insurer portfolio data with the polygons. In an embodiment,the polygons may be converted to weather related latitude and longitudecoordinates and matched to insurance data related latitude and longitudecoordinates. The insurer portfolio data may be assigned a policy site IDnumber and the polygon may be assigned a feature ID number, with bothstored in a data warehouse. In an embodiment, the weather data may besporadic real-time data and additional catastrophe data may beprocessed, including terrorist acts. The insurer portfolio data mayinclude insured dollar values for individual insured properties alongwith other insurance financial information or other metrics and thereport may include display of the dollar values for each point affectedby the weather data.

The present invention may also provide for a method of generatingintegrated data event reports comprising the steps of loading insurerportfolio data with geographic sites into a spatial database, feedingboundary data into the spatial database, using an impact tool todetermine which of the geographic sites have been affected by theboundary data and generating a report of the affected geographic sitesthat identifies risk areas based on the insurer portfolio data.

In an embodiment, the report may be generated from an internet webportal. The insurance portfolio may be loaded by a insurer from the webportal. In an embodiment, a reporting engine is provided that connectsto the data warehouse to display the affected sites and insurancemetrics (TIV deductible, limit, etc.) in a grid. A user may choose toview a map of the affected sites and request a map server to get the mapby providing the unique feature grids of the weather event and portfoliosites stored as a shape file in a spatial database. In an embodiment,the map server may then connect to the spatial database to get spatialinformation and then generate the map. The map may be passed to thereporting engine in order to display the report. In an embodiment, ainsurer may subscribe to the system to receive reports to be transmittedat least daily by the reporting engine. The reporting engine may run allthe subscribed reports overnight and may save the results as a cachefile. In an embodiment, when a user logs onto the website and runssubscribed reports, it hits the cache file and the report is returned tothe user's desktop.

In an embodiment, the boundary data may include severe history, tornado,hail, wind gust, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, precipitation,water surge, fire or terrorist attack data in a geospatial form. Othermanmade events may also be reported. The weather data may be collectedfrom various locations and the data may be transformed into polygons andpoints on the map. The spatial database may use each point to representan insurance portfolio site and each polygon represents a weatherrelated event. In an embodiment, a weather affected site may beidentified when a point is found inside or on the boundary of a polygon.An impact tool may be provided to implement a java application in orderto find all the points that are falling within a polygon by usingspatial queries. In an embodiment, the spatial query may operate byfinding a point in each polygon. The affected sites and events may thenbe loaded into the data warehouse.

In an embodiment, an automated synchronization tool may be run everyweek and an impact tool is run for each weather event and may be runevery night. A insurer may provide insurance portfolio data to a websitein various formats, including flat files, Excel or SQL server database.In an embodiment, the website may clean, transform and load theinsurance portfolio data into a data warehouse. Longitude and latitudedata may be represented on the portfolio site by using thesynchronization tool which could be a java application. In anembodiment, a spatial point may be constructed by using the longitudeand latitude data for all inputted portfolio data. The portfolio dataalong with newly created spatial point information may be loaded into aspatial database.

A further embodiment of the present invention provides for a computersystem for processing weather and insurer portfolio data comprising anend user device including a computer-readable signal-bearing medium, areceiving circuit in the medium to receive insurer portfolio dataincluding geographic address data, a transmitting circuit in the mediumfor transmitting the geographic address data to a processor, a selectioncircuit in the medium for selecting weather event data and a displaycircuit in the medium to generate graphic images depicting the matchedweather event data and insurer portfolio data in an integrated report.

In an embodiment, the display medium may include logic for determiningthreshold values to be selected by a user in order to orchestrate theinsurer portfolio data. The geographic address may be a point providedby a spatial database and the weather event data may be a polygon andthe logic determines when the point is at or within the polygon. In anembodiment, the processor may include a data warehouse, a spatialdatabase and a mapping engine server, interconnected in order to processreal-time weather data and correlate the insurer portfolio data. An ANSmay be provided that is connected to the data warehouse in order totrigger a reporting engine to display the integrated report. In anembodiment, the geographic address and the weather event data mayinclude latitude and longitude coordinates that are compared to generatea graphical report where the coordinates overlap.

The system reports provide an aggregation of total risk for a portfolioaffected by a weather event represented on a grid and map. The systemreports may run periodically (e.g., nightly) or on ad hoc basis by theuser. Report templates are created for the system and users maysubscribe to some or all of the reports. Reports will be run based onuser specified risk thresholds (TIV, storm severity, total loss, etc.)for a user specific portfolio. Users are responsible for setting thethresholds through saving assigned values to one or more “prompts”within the report template. For the nightly runs of the reports, thereport result (document) will be saved and e-mailed directly to theuser. Users may run a report at any time through a business intelligencereporting engine interface and may optionally change the values assignedto one or more prompts.

The system may include special request insurer exposure reports based oninsurer selected spatial data—e.g., the historical hurricane track forAndrew. These are major catastrophic event reports that provide anaggregation of total risk for a portfolio based on data loaded into thesystem representing a single major event. The event could be a majorwater surge, a terror act, or any type of catastrophe that is notavailable through the periodic updates provided by the weather service.The source and the structure of this data are disparate. The data forall events must share the characteristic that each record containssingle polygon geometry and associated attributes.

The system's real-time and major catastrophe reports have the same typeof output. The resulting report will contain grid results listing theportfolio sites within the event footprint and any exposure metricchosen in the report (TIV, limit, premium, deductible, etc.), as well asa map image of the affected area thematically shaded by exposure metric.

Multiple types of reports can be automatically generated either from areal-time data feed, generated by insurer or provided data on ad hoc/byrequest basis. The real-time based reports may have extendedfunctionality to allow for additional data sources to be included withthe real-time feed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

For the purpose of facilitating an understanding of the invention, thereis illustrated in the accompanying drawings an embodiment thereof, froman inspection of which, when considered in connection with the followingdescription, the invention, its construction and operation, and many ofits advantages should be readily understood and appreciated.

FIG. 1 is a flow chart depicting the application architecture for thepresent invention;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart describing a method of performing an embodimentof the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting wildfire data without satellite imagery andwith site locations;

FIG. 4 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting wildfire data with satellite imagery andsite locations;

FIG. 5 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting hail data without satellite imagery and withsite locations;

FIG. 6 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting hail data with satellite imagery and sitelocations;

FIG. 7 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting tornado data without satellite imagery andwithout site locations;

FIG. 8 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting tornado data with site locations andsatellite imagery;

FIG. 9 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting tornado data without satellite imagery andwith site locations;

FIG. 10 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting hurricane data without site locations; and

FIG. 11 is a screen-shot of a map generated for an embodiment of thepresent invention depicting hurricane data with site locations.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In an embodiment, the weather event and risk report system 1, as shownin FIGS. 1-11, can process and analyze weather data and manmade eventdata (collectively boundary data) and insurer portfolio data andintegrate such data to provide reports. The weather data can includemeteorological data. Manmade data can include newswire events includingfires and terrorist attacks. The insurer portfolio data can includeinsurance data, such as insured properties and other financialinformation and insurance metrics. The reports generated by the systemcan include charts and graphical representations, such as maps. Anoverview of the system is depicted in FIGS. 1 and 2 as follows. FIG. 1is a flow chart depicting the application architecture for the presentinvention, and FIG. 2 is a flow chart describing a method of performingan embodiment of the present invention. An embodiment of the presentinvention will be described with respect to FIGS. 1 and 2 as follows.

The system 1 can analyze the following weather (meteorological andcatastrophic) events, including tornados, hail, wind gusts, wildfires,earthquakes, and hurricanes. The system may also be used to analyzeother catastrophic events, such as major water surge, or manmade actssuch as fires or terrorist acts and other perils. The system may analyzeany events that are available on a newswire link. In an embodiment,technology used in the system 1 may include computer-readablesignal-bearing medium, such as a mapping engine server 20, a datawarehouse 30, an automatic notification server (ANS) cache 40, an ANS50, a spatial database 60, an impact analysis tool 70 and asynchronization (SYNC) tool 80 each having logic medium includingsoftware, integrated circuits/processor or other hardware. The systemmay include a receiving circuit, a transmitting circuit, a selectioncircuit and a display circuit all provided by an end user device 52. Inan embodiment, the system may use an Oracle Spatial Database, a NetezzaCorporation NPS® Data Warehouse, a MicroStrategy Corporation BusinessIntelligence Reporting Engine, a MicroStrategy Corporation Narrowcastautomatic notification server (ANS), a MapInfo Corporation MapExtremeServer mapping engine, an impact analysis application tool (for example,a java application), a database synchronization tool (for example, ajava application), or a Sunopsis, Inc. ETL orchestration tool.

Major steps of accomplishing the present method as depicted in FIG. 2may include:

1 a. Feeding weather data into the spatial database tables that areconverted to polygons by an impact tool on a scheduled basis;

2 a. Constructing a spatial query by selecting location pointscorrelated to the insurer portfolio data that had been loaded into adata warehouse and the spatial database and locating the points within ahazard or weather event polygon;

3 a. Storing results of the spatial query in the data warehouse of thewebsite portal;

4 a. Periodic running of the ANS to allow it to receive report requestinformation and send notifications;

5 a. Automatically generating reports through the reporting engine ofthe system based on insurer portfolio data locations that are affectedby the weather events; and

6 a. Accessing reports on the web portal or via email broadcasted toaffected users that have selected such reports.

A more detailed description of the steps of the present system aredescribed with respect to FIG. 1. The orchestration tool 85 receives newdata from a weather service 5, via the spatial database 60 and initiatesthe analysis and impact processes. The orchestration tool 90 can alsooutput text and load data back to the tables of the data warehouse 30and provide synchronization with the data warehouse 30. In anembodiment, the orchestration tool 85 can provide email notification toIT department for status updates including failures. The impact analysistool 70 determines which insurer sites 75 are affected by polygons 65 a(described below).

The impact analysis tool 70 can interrelate insured data 65 b withweather data 65 a received from the spatial database 60 by analyzinggiven insurer portfolio data points located within polygonsrepresentative of weather or manmade events. A polygon is boundaryinformation for a geometric representation of boundary data such as aweather event that is generated by the weather service 5 or manmadeevent from a newswire link that is adapted by the spatial database 60. Apolygon may have a boundary or perimeter of any geometric shape andincludes shapes having more than four sides or having no sides e.g. ovalor circle. The size of polygons may vary based on the particular weatherevent (e.g. bigger polygon for hurricane or a smaller polygon for awildfire). Polygon boundaries and portfolio data points are correlatedaccording to latitude and longitude data by the spatial database 60. Useof earth longitude and latitude, which could be viewed as twodimensional grid with latitude as the x-coordinate and longitude as they-coordinate, is used as a relative data reference for integrating theportfolio data and weather data.

Insurer portfolio data 10 is input by a user 12. The portfolio data mayinclude insurance data, such as an address of an insured property whichis loaded into the data warehouse 30. Using geocoding (latitude andlongitude) the address for each insured property is found by the mappingengine 20. In other embodiments, other data can be mapped also. Themapping engine 20 then provides corresponding data points and developsspatial data 15 that is synchronized with the spatial database 60 anddata warehouse 30. Next the impact tool 70 and the ANS 50 are run tocompare latitude and longitude data 65 a,b,c, 75 (sometimes for up tosix hours) in order to develop an imaginary boundary formed by threevertices to make a polygon. Then the feature ID 65 a for each polygon ismatched to each data point 65 c and assigned a policy site ID. Then theaffected site data 75 is pushed back to the data warehouse 30 and,finally, back to the reporting engine 95.

A user 12 selects threshold values, for example by choosing a beginningdate for the weather event and enters them into the website portal 35.The reporting engine 95 then runs a report from any one of the mapreports 25, ANS reports 35, the ANS cache 40, subscribed reports 45,regular reports 46 or report subscriptions 47. The report can identifythe geographic areas affected by the selected weather event. Results areshown as a grid and use the map exchange server 20 to get the feature ID(polygon) from the data warehouse 30 in order to query the spatialdatabase 60 via the orchestration tool 90 and displays the map 25 to theuser. The user can adjust the resolution of the map for differentevents. For example, if viewing a tornado (see FIGS. 8, 9), since it isa small event, the user might zoom-in from an entire U.S. map view to astate or county view. For a larger weather event, such as a hurricane(see FIGS. 10, 11), a large area or regional view can be selected. Auser can convert the graphical map to satellite imagery via the mappingengine 20. The user can also choose many other features and layers to bedisplayed including major highways, cities and site numbers to add tothe maps using the features of the mapping engine 20.

The automatic notification server (ANS) 50 connects to the portal page35 and when a user subscribes to a report 45, the reporting system 95can implement the ANS 50 to run a nightly report to obtain the requesteddata. The ANS 50 can deliver the report by email or to an end userdevice such as a Personal Digital Assistant, cellular phone, computerand/or printer or pager 52 such as via the internet or to the insurer'sPC 12 (which may also be an end user device) or may generate a cache(Cube) 40 that includes the subscribed report 45 (usually from midnightto 7:00 am.). When a user 12 logs into the portal 35 and selects “runreport” the ANS 50 checks for the cache 40 (instead of running thereport) and delivers the report 45 to the user 12, 52. It is to beunderstood that use of the cache 40 to deliver the report 45 is muchquicker than running the report anew each time the user queries thereporting engine 95. In an embodiment, the system provides forintegration of the mapping engine 20 and reporting engine 95 with uniquedrivers. Such integration provides quicker results and avoids opensource processing which may be much slower.

The insurer 12 provides its portfolio 10 to the host website in variousformats, such as flat files, Excel, SQL server database etc. The hostwebsite cleans, transforms and loads data into the data warehouse 30.The present invention can process many types of portfolio data havingmany thousands of fields, tables or other data types. For example,insurance portfolio data can be processed including insured informationsuch as name, address, social security numbers, phone numbers, insuredproperty data including address, insured value, actual value or ridervalues, and policy information including expiration dates, policylimits, etc. Next, insurer portfolio sites 10 are loaded from the datawarehouse 30 into the spatial database 60 via the orchestration tool 90.Longitude and latitude data is used by the SYNC tool 80 in order torepresent the portfolio site data 65 c. By using synchronization tool80, a java application, spatial points are constructed by usinglongitude and latitude for all portfolios 65 c. Then the portfolio siteinformation 65 b along with newly created spatial points are loaded intothe spatial database 60. Next, weather data 5 is loaded into the spatialdatabase tables 60. In an embodiment, a weather service server 5, forexample from Harvard Design & Mapping, may provide weather related data,such as severe history (tornado, hail and wind gust), earthquakes,wildfires, hurricanes, and precipitation data in a geospatial form. Theweather service 5 collects weather data from various locations andtransforms it into polygons. All the weather data 5 is pushed intotables of the spatial database 60 on a periodic or real-time basis.

Next, the impact tool 70 is run (e.g., nightly) to find which sites 75are affected by each weather event 65 a. In the spatial database 60,each point represents a portfolio site 65 b and each polygon representsa weather related event 65 a. When a point is found inside or on theboundary of a polygon, it means that such site is affected by thatweather event. This logic is implemented by the impact tool 70, that maybe a java application, which finds all the points that are fallingwithin a polygon by using spatial database queries. Affected sites andevents 75 are then loaded into the data warehouse 30. In an embodiment,a synchronization tool 80 may be run every week and the impact tool 70for each weather event 5 may be run every night.

In the next step, a insurer 12 logs onto the host web portal 35 in orderto access the system 1 and runs the reporting engine 95. The reportingengine 95 connects to the data warehouse 30 to display the affectedsites 75 and provides the TIV in a grid, map or chart (see FIGS. 3-11).If the user 12 chooses to view the map of the affected areas, then thereporting engine 95 requests a mapping server 20 to get a map byproviding the unique feature grids of the weather event and portfoliosites stored as a shape file in the spatial database 60. The map server20 then connects to the spatial database 60 to get the spatialinformation and then generates maps. Once a map is ready, it passes itto the reporting engine 95 to display the maps in the reports.

The weather service 5 may collect spatial data including wildfire datafrom MODIS, which are essentially longitude and latitude of thelocation, and generates a circle of 1 kilometer radius around thecentroid of the wildfire. Any point that falls within the wildfirecircle has the potential risk exposed to that event.

The weather service 5 can collect data for tornados, hail and wind gustdata from various sources and construct polygons. Any point that fallswithin a severe weather polygon has the potential risk exposed to thatevent. The weather service can collect earthquake information around theworld from many sources and the system constructs polygons around thepoint data based on an algorithm as follows:

The weather service 5 provides three types of hurricane data: 1)hurricane tracks; 2) hurricane windarea; and 3) hurricane windpath. Thesystem tracks data and tracks the eye of the hurricane at a point at agiven time. Windarea data consists of average wind speeds of 34 knots,50 knots, 64 knots and 100 knots observed at South East, South West,North East and North West. Using an algorithm, the weather serviceconstructs a polygon joining these points for each speed band. Reportsare generated so that a insurer can know the exposure at each level of34, 50, 64 and 100 knots average wind speeds.

The weather service 5 also provides windpath data which is same aswindarea except it reports maximum wind speeds, instead of average windspeeds. Historical, current and forecast data for each category isprovided by the weather service 5. Forecast data plays an important rolewhen insurers want to see exposure by a hurricane event. A lot ofcomplicated analysis can be eliminated by using rich geometry featuresof the spatial database 60, which essentially finds a point in apolygon. The system can be automated via the ANS 50 so that as soon asany weather related data is available, analysis initiates and theresults are stored. A insurer 12 can use standard reporting interfacesthrough a web browser and view the exposure data from the portal 35 ofthe system 1. The insurer 12 may export the results to Excel or otherformats and can do further analysis. By binding maps to the exposure, ainsurer can view the actual map of the exposure. When predeterminedthreshold values are set, a insurer can get automated notifications viathe ANS 50 when its exposure by any weather related event exceeds thepre-set threshold value, such as the TIV in the coming days.

Turning to FIGS. 3-11, the present invention will be described withrespect to specific embodiments. In particular, screen shots fromreports produced by the reporting engine 95 including mapped weatherdata and points affected by the weather data will be discussed. Turningto FIG. 3, a screen shot of a map is depicted showing wild fire datawith site locations. The screen shot includes a map area 100, layercontrol area 101 and chart 102. The map area 100 is a graphicalrepresentation of the data provided in the chart 102.

Column 111 of the chart includes the weather data obtained from thespatial database, based on the threshold values inserted by the user. Inthis example, the weather data is wild fire data and the data requestedwas for wild fires occurring on Oct. 23, 2006 at 0000 hours (midnight).Column 112 identifies the specific weather event tracked and receivedbased on weather service data. In this embodiment, column 112 includes afeature ID number 3768059 which identifies a specific wildfire matchingthe threshold parameters selected by the user.

The ANS uses the feature ID number to track the weather event. The thirdcolumn 113 is for additional metrics related to the weather relatedevent. In this figure, such metrics have not been included. Column 114is the TIV for the properties affected with respect to the weatherevent, in this case the wild fire. In this example, a single propertyidentified with a point on the map has a TIV of $114,444.44. The datafor this single property is received by the data warehouse 30 whichstores the insurer portfolio data including such properties. The impactanalysis tool 70 uses the weather data and the spatial database todetermine that this property is within the polygon 120 by locating thedata point 125 within the polygon 120. In this embodiment, the polygonis a circle, but many other shaped polygons may be depicted, as will bediscussed in detail below.

Each property from the insurer portfolio data is assigned a policy siteID number and is tracked by the system 1 according to the policy site IDnumber. In the case of the map displayed in FIG. 3, the policy ID sitenumber may be displayed (not shown). As shown in FIG. 3, the TIV isdisplayed for the data point 125. However, it can be seen that in themap area 100, the feature ID number related to the wild fire number3768059 is displayed in the middle of the polygon 120. It is to beunderstood that this map is of a relatively small area in that the wildfire covers a relatively small geographic area. Therefore, the mapdepicts individual street names as it is enlarged to depict a 1.35kilometer range, as shown at the top of the map.

The layer control area 101 of this screen shot depicts different optionsavailable for modifying the graphical representation of the map area100. Different hazard layers and load layers may be depicted in thisview. As well, different report layers, such as wild fire, visible andlabel layers may be depicted. Portfolio locations may be either visibleor labeled by checking the radio buttons. A global map may be depicted.Further, a satellite view may be checked with the radio boxes to bevisible and labeled. Countries may be identified globally. Additionally,Europe, North America and Australia maps may be depicted by clicking onspecific radio buttons.

FIG. 3 depicts the satellite imagery with the visible button unchecked.Therefore, FIG. 3 does not depict satellite imagery. Turning to FIG. 4,it can be seen that in the layer control area 101, the satellite imagerybox for “visible” is checked. In the map area 100 it can be seen thatthe satellite imagery is depicted and actual photographic views of thegeography is displayed. It is understood that the same labels andvisible portfolio locations of the wildfire depictions from FIG. 3 arealso displayed in FIG. 4.

Turning to FIG. 5, a screen shot of a severe weather event with respectto hail data is depicted including site locations. It can be seen in maparea 100 of FIG. 5 that a map is depicted having a polygon 120 a.Located within the polygon 120 a are points representing insuredproperties that represent the input insurer portfolio data from the datawarehouse. In the chart 102, the first column 111 depicts the severeweather history for the hail storm which is identified as feature IDnumber 6441327 and is identified in the second column 112 according tothe threshold value selected by the user of a weather event occurring onOct. 19, 2006 at 00 hours, 8 minutes and 10 seconds. In addition, column113 depicts the hail size of 3.25 inches. This is an additionalthreshold value that can be adjusted by the user of the system in orderto match related weather data from the weather reporting system. Thisdata is searched by the ANS in order to obtain a polygon 120 a from themapping engine and to identify which points based on the insurerportfolio data are within the polygon 120 a. The orchestration tool 90can calculate a TIV (as shown in the fourth column 114) of $687,474 thatis affected by this weather event. (In the embodiment shown, not all ofthe points that match or are located within the polygon 120 a aredepicted and therefore the individual dollar values for each propertypoint shown in the map area 100 will not add up to the TIV of column114.) Turning to FIG. 6, the same image of FIG. 5 is depicted but usinga satellite image layered with the polygon 120 a. As shown at the top ofthe map area 100 in FIGS. 5 and 6, the zoom is set at 14.71 kilometersin order to zoom in on this particular polygon 120 a.

Turning to FIG. 7, a screen shot is depicted showing tornado data. Themap area 100 depicts polygons 131-139. In the view of the map area 100,the report layers identifying the insurer portfolio insurance data arenot depicted in this view. As this view is zoomed out to a relativelylarge area of 161.04 kilometers, it is not useful to depict the pointswithin the polygons. Turning to FIG. 8, a view similar to that in FIG. 7of a screen shot is shown that is zoomed in to 57.67 kilometers thatalso includes site location and satellite imagery. It can be seen in thelayer control area 101 that the radio buttons for satellite imagery havebeen checked and also for the portfolio locations to be visible andlabeled are checked. Thus, in the map area 100 of FIG. 8 the polygons131-137 are depicted. The other polygons 138 and 139 depicted in FIG. 7are not displayed in the map area 100 of FIG. 8, as this view has beenzoomed in to depict a smaller area. As shown in the map area 100 of FIG.8, the insured value of each individual property location point locatedwithin the polygons 131-137 are depicted (as well as points outside ofthe polygons). Although not depicted in FIG. 7 or 8, a TIV for thepoints identified by the ANS 50 that are affected by this tornado can bedisplayed in a chart when selected by the user and the report isgenerated.

Turning to FIG. 9, a view similar to FIG. 7 is depicted. However, italso includes the insurer portfolio insurance data for this segment ofthe map. As can be seen in layer control area 101, the portfoliolocation radio buttons for visible and label have been checked and inthe map area 100, points are shown on the map where insured propertiesare located. As well, the map depicts the same polygons as depicted inFIG. 7. These polygons 131-139 (see FIG. 7) are in the same relativelocations as the zoom for the map area 100 of FIG. 9, which is set at161.04 kilometers (which is the same as in FIG. 7).

FIGS. 10 and 11 depict hurricane Ernesto and the affected propertiestaken from insurer portfolio data. FIG. 10 is the graphicalrepresentation of the report depicting polygons 120 c, representative ofhurricane Ernesto, and FIG. 11 is the same report including portfoliodata points as visible. The chart 102 depicts the threshold valueinformation selected by the user/insurer from the portal website 35 thatwas used by the system 1 to generate the reports as depicted in FIGS. 10and 11. The chart 102 in the first column 111 depicts the Tropical StormName Forecast Warning Data and the second column 112 depicts theTropical Issue Date Forecast Warning data for Ernesto on Sep. 1, 2006,at 0300 hours (3:00 am). This data correlates with the polygon 120 cwhich shows the approximate outline of the hurricane area at thespecified time. The polygon 120 d depicts the hurricane the same day butat 0900 hours (9:00 am). Thus, the map area 100 depicts the hurricane'schange in location over a 6 hour period. The third column 113 depictsthe Tropical Event Date Forecast Warning Data for these time periods.

For FIGS. 10 and 11, the chart 102 shows in the fourth column 114 theTropical Storm Event Forecast Warning Feature ID number of 2201 for the3:00 am position of Ernesto and Feature ID number of 2337 for the 9:00am position of Ernesto. Other threshold values have been selectedincluding at the fifth column 115 the Tropical Maximum Gust Forecast of55 mph for the 3:00 am position and 45 mph for the 9:00 am position.Other Metrics can be chosen and depicted in the sixth column 116 (noneshown in FIG. 10 or 11). Finally, for each period selected, the TIV isdepicted in the seventh column 117. As shown in FIG. 11 on the map area100, individual points correlating to the insured properties identifiedin the insurer portfolio data obtained from the data warehouse 30 aredepicted. The spatial database 60 determines the total number of pointslocated within the polygon 120 c and the reporting engine 95 calculatesa TIV of $1.291 billion. For the polygon 120 d a TIV of $1.637 billionis depicted.

The report as shown in FIGS. 10 and 11 also includes a “Key” area 105that provides a key for the colors of the points to show increasingvalues according to the insurer portfolio data. It is to be understoodthat many other types of reports with varying combinations of data canbe chosen by the user. For example, a hurricane path view may beprovided to show all properties included in the insurer portfolio datathat are in the path of the storm. Of course, all reports will varyaccording to the particular threshold values selected by the user foreach particular weather event including earthquakes. The above describedscreen shots in FIGS. 3-11 are only examples of many of the types ofreports that can be provided to the users of the system. Many otherreports for many other types of weather events may be produced althoughsuch reports are not described above. Such reports may be produced formanmade events such as fires or terrorist attacks as well.

Thus, it can be understood that a user of the system can quickly andeasily identify where its insured properties are and what the TIV is fora multiple of weather related events. The flexibility of the system toprovide maps that can be zoomed in and zoomed out and that can belayered in multiple fashions allows for the quick comprehension of thedata and for insurance companies to prepare actuarial analyses andunderstand their exposure very quickly. It is also understood that thesemaps can be generated in very short times due to the system'sintegration of the spatial database, data warehouse, automaticnotification server, orchestration tool, mapping engine or the reportingengine. Such integration of some of these components together allow forthe collection of real-time weather data to be correlated with theinsurer portfolio data in order to generate these reports and mapsrapidly. As well, it is to be understood that the users of the systemmay select from many threshold values, including data range, weatherevent, geographic area, TIV range, property value or other metrics, inorder to pinpoint the types of damage and exposure about which suchusers may be concerned with respect to certain types of insurancepolicies they have written or acquired and desire to analyze. Thus, itis to be understood that an insurance company using this system need notwait for claims to be filed by individual policyholders in order tobegin determining their TIV. By use of the present system, withinminutes after the occurrence of the weather related or meteorologicalevent, the TIV can be determined with greater accuracy. It is also to beunderstood the portfolio data may be data for clients other thaninsurers, such as governments, state and federal agencies and otherprivate firms who need risk data combined with real-time meteorologicaldata.

While particular embodiments have been shown and described, it will beapparent to those skilled in the art that changes and modifications maybe made without departing from the principles of the invention in itsbroader aspects. Details set forth in the foregoing description andaccompanying drawings are offered by way of illustration only and not asa limitation. The actual scope of the present invention is intended tobe defined in the following claims when viewed in their properperspective based on the prior art.

1. A system for generating weather event reports comprising: a spatialdatabase containing insurer portfolio data, including a point thatgraphically represents a portion of the insurer portfolio data, and thespatial database containing weather data including boundary information;an impact analysis tool for determining the point that is affected bythe weather data by locating the point that falls within the boundaryinformation; and a reporting engine for generating a report includingmapped weather data and the point affected by the weather data.
 2. Thesystem of claim 1 further comprising an orchestration tool that sortsthe weather data and insurer portfolio data based on a user definedthreshold value.
 3. The system of claim 2 wherein the threshold valueincludes a date range, weather event, geographic area, TIV range orproperty value that are received by an automatic notification server(ANS) to generate a report for the user.
 4. The system of claim 1wherein the system loads the weather data at least once everytwenty-four hours and the system includes a mapping engine for mappingthe weather data and providing a data warehouse to store the insurerportfolio data.
 5. The system of claim 1 wherein the weather dataincludes at least tornado, hail, wind, earthquake, water surge,hurricane track, hurricane wind area, hurricane wind path data, fires orterrorist attack.
 6. The system of claim 1 further comprising anorchestration tool to process user configurable threshold values thatassist the mapping engine in preparing the mapped weather data.
 7. Thesystem of claim 1 wherein the spatial database provides polygonsrepresentative of weather data boundary information and the impactanalysis tool that matches the insurer portfolio data with the polygons.8. The system of claim 7 wherein the polygons are converted to weatherrelated latitude and longitude coordinates and matched to insurance datarelated latitude and longitude coordinates.
 9. The system of claim 7wherein the insurer portfolio data is assigned a policy site ID numberand the polygon is assigned a feature ID number and where both arestored in a data warehouse.
 10. The system of claim 1 wherein theweather data is sporadic real-time data and additional catastrophe datamay be processed including terrorist acts.
 11. The system of claim 1wherein the insurer portfolio data includes insured dollar values forindividual insured properties and the report includes display of thedollar values for each point affected by the weather data.
 12. A methodof generating integrated data reports comprising the steps of: loadinginsurer portfolio data including geographic sites into a spatialdatabase; feeding boundary data into the spatial database; using animpact tool to determine which of the geographic sites have beenaffected by the boundary data; and generating a report of the affectedgeographic sites and identifying risk areas based on the insurerportfolio data.
 13. The method of claim 12 wherein the report may begenerated from an internet web portal.
 14. The method of claim 13wherein the insurer portfolio data is loaded by a insurer from the webportal.
 15. The method of claim 12 further comprising a data warehousethat connects to a reporting engine to display the affected sites andinsurance metrics in a grid.
 16. The method of claim 12 wherein a usercan select to view a map of the affected sites and then request a mapserver to obtain the map by providing unique feature grids of theboundary and portfolio data stored as a shape file in the spatialdatabase.
 17. The method of claim 12 wherein a map server connects tothe spatial database to get spatial information and then generate thereport.
 18. The method of claim 13 wherein the report is passed to thereporting engine in order to display the report.
 19. The method of claim12 wherein a insurer may subscribe to the system to receive reports tobe transmitted at least daily by a reporting engine.
 20. The method ofclaim 19 wherein the reporting engine runs all the subscribed reportsovernight and saves the results as a cache file.
 21. The method of claim20 wherein when a user logs onto the website and runs subscribedreports, the search hits the cache file and a report is returned to theinsurer's desktop.
 22. The method of claim 12 wherein the boundary dataincludes severe history, tornado, hail, wind gust, earthquakes,wildfires, hurricanes, precipitation, water surge, fire or terroristattack data in a geospatial form.
 23. The method of claim 12 wherein theboundary data is collected from various locations and the data istransformed into polygons and points on a map depicted in the report.24. The method of claim 23 wherein the spatial database uses each pointto represent an insurance portfolio site and each polygon represents aweather related event.
 25. The method of claim 24 wherein the affectedgeographic site is identified when the point is found inside or on aboundary of the polygon.
 26. The method of claim 23 wherein an impacttool implements a java application in order to find all the points thatare falling with in the polygon by using spatial queries.
 27. The methodof claim 26 wherein the spatial query operates by matching latitude andlongitude data for each point with latitude and longitude data for eachpolygon.
 28. The method of claim 27 wherein affected geographic sitesand weather related events are loaded into a data warehouse.
 29. Themethod of claim 12 wherein an automated synchronization tool is runevery week in order to synchronize the data and an impact tool is runevery night to integrate the weather data.
 30. The method of claim 12wherein a insurer provides insurance portfolio data to a website invarious formats including flat files, Excel or SQL server database. 31.The method of claim 30, wherein the website cleans, transforms and loadsthe insurance portfolio data into a data warehouse.
 32. The method ofclaim 12 wherein longitude and latitude data for the portfolio data isintegrated by an orchestration tool by using a synchronization tool or ajava application.
 33. The method of claim 32 wherein a spatial point isconstructed by using the longitude and latitude data for all inputtedportfolio data.
 34. The method of claim 33 wherein the portfolio dataalong with newly created spatial point is loaded into the spatialdatabase.
 35. A computer system for analysis and display of weather andinsurer portfolio data comprising: an end user device including acomputer-readable signal-bearing medium; a receiving circuit in themedium to receive client portfolio data including geographic addressdata; a transmitting circuit in the medium for transmitting thegeographic address data to a processor; a selection circuit in themedium for selecting weather event data parameters and transmitting theparameters to the processor for correlating the weather event dataparameters with the geographic address data in order to generateboundary data related to the geographic address data that has beenaffected by the weather event data; and a display circuit in the mediumto generate and display graphic images depicting the boundary data, sothat such graphic images may be used to conduct risk analysis.
 36. Thesystem of claim 35 wherein the display circuit includes logic fordetermining threshold values to be selected by a user in order toorchestrate the insurer portfolio data.
 37. The system of claim 35wherein the geographic address is a point provided by a spatial databaseand the weather event data is a polygon and the logic determines whenthe point is at or within the polygon.
 38. The system of claim 35wherein the processor includes a data warehouse, a spatial database, animpact analysis tool and a mapping engine server interconnected in orderto process real-time weather data and correlate the insurer portfoliodata.
 39. The system of claim 38 wherein an automatic notificationserver is connected to the data warehouse in order to trigger areporting engine to display the integrated report.
 40. The system ofclaim 35 wherein the geographic address and weather event data includelatitude and longitude coordinates and are compared in order to generatea graphical map where the coordinates overlap.